


There's A Difference

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [80]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, M/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 07:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15262518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: “I came out here,” Will said, ice in his veins, “because I didn’t want to be bothered.”Hannibal leaned back, his hands braced on the porch rail behind him. “A motivation I can understand.”“And yet,Doctor, you refuse to let me be.”





	There's A Difference

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Gunsmith AU. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).
> 
> Broke my own rule for this week and wrote something new, rather than revisiting something old. Forgive me.

“I came out here,” Will said, ice in his veins, “because I didn’t want to be bothered.”

Hannibal leaned back, his hands braced on the porch rail behind him. “A motivation I can understand.”

“And yet, _Doctor_ , you refuse to let me be.”

“You didn’t say you wanted to be alone; you didn’t want to be bothered. There’s a difference, Will.”

His name in Hannibal’s mouth, soft. A kind of aural caress. God.

He crossed his arms tighter across his chest and deepened his scowl. Wished for once that there was somebody around, that his little house wasn’t quite the island on the plains that he had so carefully designed it to be. No people for miles, no town for fifty more: just him and his dogs and his horses. He liked it that way, damn it, and Hannibal knew that. That he was still here after an hour of Will refusing to let him in only pointed to the man’s perversion, the joy he took in making Will squirm.

What worried Will, though, was how much he found himself enjoying the doctor’s attentions, now as always.

“You have a long ride back to Billings,” Will said, aiming to put steel in his voice. “Leave now, and you’ll only have to do part of it in the dark.”

Hannibal smiled. A small and crafty thing. “You’d turn me out into the wilds?” he said. “Cast me out alone, just like that? The trails are dangerous at night. You know that.”

“Maybe I’m hoping you’ll accidentally ride over a cliff. Or be set upon by wolves.”

The doctor stood up straight, slowly, with a practiced kind of ease. He was to all appearances a creature from another world, a man who belonged to Paris or London, not the bony crags of Montana. Even after his long ride, every hair was in place, every neat fold of his jacket. He’d loosened the silk cravat at his throat and removed his riding gloves, the only accommodations made to the sun and the gentle autumn heat. All told, he looked as though he’d stepped from a stagecoach, from a train, all of him artfully arranged to make Will’s heart leap to his throat, to set his body back on a trail that he thought he’d veered off of two years ago, and now it was as though no time at all had passed.

 _You don’t want this_ , he thought, he told himself, stern. You ran away from him for a reason.

“I’ve missed you,” Hannibal said. “You cannot know how much.”

“I know,” Will said, sharp. “I read your letters. You said.”

Hannibal’s eyes--those great, dangerous orbs--shone with something like fervor. “You read them?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why did you never write back?”

“Because I didn’t know how else to say no. To say _leave me alone_.” He laughed, a weird, wild thing. “I mean, I fucking came out to the edge of nowhere to get away from you, and look how much good that did.”

Hannibal was going to touch him. He knew it. Knew that the moment Hannibal’s fingers found the rough cut of his work shirt, all of this, the distance that he’d put between himself and the rest of the world, would go up like so much blown smoke.

“If you want me to leave,” Hannibal said softly, his fingers drifting up in to the air, “tell me now, once and for all. And I will.”

Will bit back a shiver, as if someone had walked over his grave, and ordered his body to move, shouted at himself to rush back inside the cabin and slam the door, lock it. Reach for his rifle.

And yet he stood still, stock straight like a post, his eyes locked on Hannibal’s face.

“Why should I believe you? You’ve never kept your word to me before.”

Hannibal brushed his fingertips across the back of Will’s hand, which was still clutched tight across his chest. “Tsk. That is not so.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No, _širdelė_. I have kept your secrets, ours, all this time. As I said that I would.” Hannibal stepped closer, so close that Will could smell his aftershave, the low, familiar tang of his sweat.  “If that were not so, you would not be in such a beautiful place, would you?”

Will felt his arms loosening, the heat of Hannibal’s body melting the steel chains he’d wrapped so neatly around his own heart. Damn it. Damn him. “Neither would you.”

The doctor smiled again. “True.”

“So you’ve kept your word to me only when it benefitted you. I don’t see how that speaks to your virtue.”

Hannibal laughed, a soft, hot sound that made Will’s cock twitch and his cheeks burn. “You’ve never come to me for my virtue, Will.”

“I’ve never come to you at all.”

“Oh, you have,” Hannibal said. “And you will again.”

He leaned down and Will’s head fell back, his hair catching the rough wood of the door, and for the first time in two years, the want that always clawed at his gut, bit greedily into his heart, threatened all at once to break free.

“Hannibal,” he said, his voice a living flame. “God, Hannibal--”

The doctor’s mouth sank vicious to Will’s neck and bit a kiss there, sucked a second, and then Will was clutching Hannibal’s shoulders, hanging on to the last shreds of his good and proper sense.

“You taste the same,” Hannibal murmured. His hands were in Will’s hair, a vise, unforgiving. “All this time, sweet, and I would know the taste of your skin, your sweat, your _need_ anywhere. Anywhere.”


End file.
